THE END OF A LINE: STRAUSS’ AND HOFMANNSTHAL’S ELEKTRA

HELGA HUSHAHN

Richard Strauss’ opera Elektra has a long historical ancestry: it started as a powerful pre-Homeric myth, and had been used by three renowned classical writers who each turned the story into a consummate drama with universal appeal. Two of them, mainly Sophocles’ Electra but also part of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, stood as models for Hofmannsthal’s tragedy Elektra. Sophocles depicts a dysfunctional family, concentrating on the daughter Electra as does Hugo von Hofmannsthal and finally Richard Strauss in his opera Elektra. When Strauss came across Hofmannsthal’s modern version, he contacted the writer asking him whether he would allow him to use his text for an opera. Delighted to be asked, Hofmannsthal agreed. Strauss shortened the already existing text by deleting a third of it, transporting parts of text to create a more intensive line for the musical drama, rearranging the word order of some sentences for a different emphasis, but he also asked Hofmannsthal to add some more text for a short lyrical interlude and some extra lyrical lines for the coda. Hofmannsthal obliged, and collaborated by corresponding with Strauss as well as meeting him. Thereby poet and composer created the ultimate modern dramatic expression of an ancient story. As Norman Del Mar declares: “This appalling story forms the basis of one of the strongest and most dramatic legends of all time.”1 The universality of Electra’s story makes her well suited for theatrical representation, especially in opera.2

1 Norman Del Mar, Richard Strauss: A Critical Commentary on His Life and Works, London, 1969, I, 294. 2 Including Mozart’s Idomeneo, Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mouches. There are films as well on Electra, for instance one 298 Helga Hushahn

Hofmannsthal’s use of the sources After his early success with poetry and short lyrical plays Hofmannsthal felt acutely the impotence of the word, was concerned about what was termed “Sprachskepsis” (“linguistic scepticism”, scepticism about the use of language) and in particular with a “Lebenskrise” (“a life crisis”), a state of mind felt by many writers at the end of the nineteenth century as expressed by Hofmannsthal:

Irgendwo ist Klang der Wahrheit Wie ein Hörnerruf von weitem, Doch ich hab ihn nicht in mir; Ja, im Mund wird mir zur Lüge, Was noch wahr schien in Gedanken.3

Art for art’s sake spelt danger and the melancholic writing of the fin de siècle troubled Hofmannsthal which he expressed in the “Chandos Letter”, published as Ein Brief in 1902.4 Hofmannsthal, concerned about what he called “Präexistenz” (“a pre-cast mould”), “glorreicher, aber gefährlicher Zustand” (“a glorious, but dangerous state”), pure aestheticism or the seductive power language can have, was searching for a new mode of writing, an ethical mode, truthful and responsible writing leading to “Existenz” (“existence”).5 He tried to achieve this by exploring a more disciplined style in plays written in a classical Greek mode – Elektra (1904), Ödipus und die Sphinx (1906) and König Ödipus (1907). The idea of writing a classical style of play was suggested to Hofmannsthal by Max Reinhardt, who during the theatre season of by the Greek director Michael Cacoyannis. A more recent film with the title Electra has nothing to do with the classical Electra, it portrays a warrior queen set in ancient times. 3 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Der Kaiser und die Hexe, in Sämtliche Werke III, Kritische Ausgabe, Dramen 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1982, 187-88: “Somewhere is the sound of truth, / Like a distant call of horns / Yet it is not within me; / Yes, what seemed in thought to be true / Becomes a lie in my mouth” (the Briefwechsel texts and the quotations from this play are my translations). In an earlier one-Act play, Gestern, from 1890 he had already doubts about his mode of writing. 4 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Sämtliche Werke XXXI, Kritische Ausgabe, Erfundene Gespräche und Briefe, 1991, 45-55. 5 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ad me ipsum”, in Gesammelte Werke: Aufzeichnungen, Frankfurt am Main, 1959, 213-17.